Kevin Bryant

SCEIS, South Carolina Enterprise Information System, is a computer information SYSTEM boondoggle costing the SC taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars. One of the darlings of the SC Budget and Control Board, it’s JUST recently been a target of criticism by elected officials. However, Sen. Greg Ryberg (R-Aiken) has been railing against it for years.

In October of 2008, the General Assembly had to return to Columbia to deal with budget cuts necessitated by the ’08 recession. Ryberg offered an amendment that would have stripped SCEIS of nearly $25 million and restored a cut ($22 million) to EFA (classroom) and PPP, Child protection, & sex offender monitoring.

Here’s the journal entry from October 2008: Senator RYBERG proposed the following Amendment No. 3 (5300R006.WGR), which was laid on the table: Amend the bill, as and if amended, SECTION 2, page 59, by adding after line 39: / SECTION 80A-F03-BUDGET AND CONTROL BOARD

80A.__. (BCB: Carry Forward) From the Budget and Control Board’s carried forward funds, the Board shall transfer: $1,459,403 to the Department of Social Services for Child Protective Services, $696,939 to the Department of Probation, Pardon and Parole for the Sex Offender Monitoring Program, $350,000 to the Department of Juvenile Justice for Sex Offender Monitoring, and $22,000,000 to the State Department of Education for Aid to School Districts – Education Finance Act. /

Unfortunately, the only argument to table was “the House has already left, we can’t amend this bill”, so the tabling motion only got 6 nays.

AYES: Alexander, Anderson, Campbell, Campsen, Ceips, Cleary, Courson, Cromer, Drummond, Elliott, Fair, Ford, Hawkins, Hayes, Hutto, Jackson, Knotts, Land, Leatherman, Leventis, Lourie, Malloy, Martin (L), Matthews, McConnell, McGill, O’Dell, Patterson, Peeler, Pinckney, Rankin, Reese, Ritchie, Scott, Setzler, Sheheen, Thomas, Vaughn, Williams, Total–39

NAYS: Bryant, Gregory, Grooms, Massey, Ryberg, Short, Total—6

​H. 3241 was placed in special order Tuesday. This is the Charter School Bill. I firmly believe that parents are the primary educators of their children, and government should help, not hinder, parents from fulfilling their role. Unfortunately, most parents do not have the ability to make the most important decision regarding their child’s education—the decision of where their child attends school.
​ I am committed to working in the S.C. Senate to give parents more education options, including the ability to decide whether their child attends a public, public charter, private or home school. On Tuesday, February 21, 2012, I voted in favor of setting H.3241 as Special Order on the Senate Calendar.
This legislation removes many barriers currently in place and it makes it easier to create a charter school.

ObamaCare Versus Individual Freedom
President Obama’s new mandate requiring all employers to purchase insurance coverage for their employees that includes abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization and contraception is an outrage, of course.

But what kind of outrage is it? Most of the public outcry has understandably centered around the mandate’s assault on religious liberty.

The mandate forces every businessman or non-profit executive with religious objections to these products to buy them anyway, or pay a fine.

The mandate is unconstitutional, for its violation of the First Amendment’s “free exercise” clause. It is also illegal, for its violation of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Some of the outrage has been rightly directed specifically at the president, as both the mandate and the underlying law, ObamaCare, are his doing.

Indeed, many pro-life citizens and members of Congress only supported ObamaCare’s passage because the president assured them that conscience rights would be protected. Thus the mandate is also a personal betrayal.

And some of the outrage is more practical. The Obama administration’s mathematically impossible assertion that abortion drugs, sterilization and contraception will somehow now simply be “free,” and thus not paid for by morally opposed insurance customers, suggests the president believes in magic.

All of these affronts to the rights and intelligence of the American people are enough to warrant the criticism the new mandate has invited.

The violation of conscience rights is simultaneously unconstitutional, illegal, and ridiculous – any one of which are sufficient grounds for its immediate rescission.

Yet, it is still not our true cause of concern. Ultimately, the character and ideology of the president, and the particular constitutional provisions being trampled by this one mandate are incidental, compared to the manifest threat to freedom intrinsic to ObamaCare itself.

The problem is not how the federal government is abusing its new power in this instance, but that the government – indeed, a single person – suddenly wields this power at all.

From SC Citizens for Life: COLUMBIA, S.C. – Your calls to our 46 state senators to stop South Carolina tax funding for abortion in ObamaCare have been extremely effective. By a slam-dunk vote of 32-9, the S.C. Senate voted today (Tuesday, February 21), to set S. 102 for special order. Special order overrides the pro-abortion senators seeking to block the bill from being debated and voted on.

Bill sponsor Senator Larry Grooms, R-Berkley, expressed his gratitude for our calls and said, “Without outside intervention this bill would never have been set for debate.” Senator Groom calls the bill a “firewall against the overreach of ObamaCare.”The next step, he said, is to assure that the bill receives a favorable vote so that it can be sent to the S.C. House. The House last year passed similar language opting South Carolina out of paying for abortions in ObamaCare, the so-called Affordable Care Act.

Predictably, the vote was strongly along party lines with six Democrats voting with the Republicans to set special order. To see how your Senator voted, click here. Five senators did not vote.

S.102 is not difficult to understand. When the U.S. Congress passed ObamaCare – the so-called Affordable Care Act – it created the opportunity for individual states to “opt out” or refuse to pay for abortions. In order for a state to opt out of paying for abortions, the state legislature must pass an opt out law. That is what S.102 does. It stops tax funding for most abortions once ObamaCare is in place by 2014.

Please feel welcome to call and thank your senator if he voted to set special order for S. 102 or, if he didn’t, to call and express your disappointment.

Senator Grooms said debate on S.102 could be as early as next week and we will need you to call your senators again once debate begins.

Please distribute this e-mail widely. E-mail the SCCL office as sccl@sclife.org if you have any problem reaching your senator’s office.

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